Village Capital and Citi Announce Winners of $100,000 for EdTech Program
TOTAL OF $100,000 AWARDED TO MPOWER FINANCING AND PEAR DECK FOR EDTECH BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
Selected by peers as top ventures that address challenges in education through technology
WASHINGTON, DC (April 6, 2015)—Village Capital and Citi today announced the winners of Village Capital EdTech: US 2015, a competition for early-stage education technology companies.
A total of $100,000 was awarded to the winners MPOWER Financing and Pear Deck, after both companies completed a three-month business training program alongside 9 other entrepreneurs. The funding was provided by VilCap Investments.
As part of the program, this group of 11 entrepreneurs total received business development training and mentorship from over 100 investors, industry experts, policymakers, and top business leaders in Washington, DC, and Chicago. More than half of the participating companies were co-founded by women or minority entrepreneurs.
- MPOWER Financing, based in New York City and Washington, DC, provides college financing to high-potential domestic & international students who are left out by traditional lenders.
- Pear Deck, based in Iowa City, helps teachers bring interactive presentations to the classroom and also provides real-time formative assessments and inquiry-driven instruction.
- Impact Engine hosted the program in Chicago.
“It’s been fantastic working with Citi and Impact Engine,” said Ross Baird, Executive Director of Village Capital. “Together, we’re supporting educational solutions for under-served students across the United States, as well as building more effective public-private partnerships to solve real problems in education.”
“We are pleased that our collaboration with Village Capital has yielded revenue growth and new capital for participating companies, as well as advanced opportunities for job creation and innovative technologies in the education sector.” said Bob Annibale, Global Director of Citi Community Development. “Congratulations to the winners and all the participants.”
The winning companies were selected by their program peers, and received feedback from a panel of four judges gave feedback: Jean Case, Chief Executive Officer of the Case Foundation; Jim Shelton, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education; Katrina Stevens, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology; and John Katzman, CEO of Noodle, a platform that helps kids make informed decisions about their education, and Founder of The Princeton Review.
The other participating companies in this program were:
- Bright Bot, which builds technology to leverage creative thinking as a key tool for self-driven learning;
- Crescerance, which is a communications apps in the K-12 Education Space; and now on a journey to becoming #1 nationally for enabling private and public schools to teach their students Mobile App Development;
- edConnective, which helps teachers move from good to great and great to outstanding;
- Enriched Schools, which matches high quality substitute teachers to schools;
- Infiniteach , which customized digital learning for children on the Autism Spectrum;
- Learning Games Network which makes effective learning games and assessment tools for learners of all ages worldwide;
- Mathalicious, which writes real-world math lessons for middle and high school teachers;
About Village Capital
Village Capital finds, trains, and invests in early-stage entrepreneurs solving major global problems. Their peer-selection model and curriculum were awarded McKinsey/Harvard Business Review’s prestigious M-Prize for innovation in 2013. Over the past 5 years, program graduates have reached 6 million customers, created over 7,000 jobs, and raised more than $110 million in follow-on capital. To learn more, visit https://www.vilcap.com or follow them on Twitter @villagecapital. To learn more, visit https://www.vilcap.com or follow us on Twitter @villagecapital.
About Citi
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: https://blog.citigroup.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi
